


as some day it may happen

by misura



Category: Brick (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-21
Updated: 2015-04-21
Packaged: 2018-03-25 02:56:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3794047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jerr Madison gets out of prison and then dead. Everything else is conjuncture.</p>
            </blockquote>





	as some day it may happen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [evewithanapple](https://archiveofourown.org/users/evewithanapple/gifts).



> you may be misled into thinking this is a casefic.
> 
> this is not a casefic.

"You knew Jerr Madison," they say, and Brendan considers drawing it out, playing the waiting game, but his head hurts and there's bills that aren't going to be paying themselves and on top of all that, there's this overwhelming, counter-intuitive-except-not-really urge to _get out of here right now_.

"Knew him, yeah. If that's why I'm here, then congratulations, you got the right guy. Well, one of them, anyways. Lot of people knew Jerr." He doesn't offer to give names. They won't ask, anyway.

"Only one of them stiffed him," they say. "We're thinking you, maybe? Came to see you, reminisce on some of the good old days, yeah? Stuff was said, tempers were lost - could have been self-defense."

"No," he says.

"No, it wasn't self-defense or no, it wasn't you that killed him?"

"If you're not going to arrest me, I think I'd like to leave. Now."

"Don't leave town."

"I was thinking Paris," Brendan says. "Seems it's nice, this time of year."

 

Cellphones are for the rich and those who wish to own them - belonging to neither group, Brendan finds a public phone instead. He hasn't spoken to Jerr in over a dozen years.

"How bad?" Brain sounds nervous, worried.

Brendan looks outside. Clear road. Sunny sky. "Bad."

"I think you should come to the office."

A car zooms by. He doesn't recognize the model. "Someone there?"

Five seconds. Ten. "She doesn't want to talk over the phone. Says she wants to help."

"Yeah. I bet she did."

"Does," Brain says. "Should I leave?"

"No." _We know our worth, the sun and I._ "Ten minutes."

 

She hasn't changed.

"Damn. You're one of _them_ , now?"

The same brand of cigarettes. The same lips. "It's a job," she says.

"Lousy pay. Long hours. So yeah, suppose I can see the appeal."

"They like you for this, Brendan. They like you a lot." Same thin, curly smoke, and no air conditioning worth a damn anywhere in the building; the smell's going to linger for days.

"You mean you do. Seeing as how you're one of them."

The same lying eyes. "I know you didn't kill him."

"Why? Did you?"

"No. Yes. Maybe. Does it matter what I say? You need me."

"Like an anvil round my neck, and me about to take a swim in the canal. Like a knife at my back."

"Should have left it at the first one," Brain says.

Everybody's a critic, and them that aren't are either liars or players. Occasionally both.

"Say I do trust you. What, then? You tell me where to go, who to talk to, what to say?" Brendan shakes his head. His headache's gone, melted away. What's taken its place is worse. "Sorry, angel. I'll pass."

She leaves. Her card, too.

He tosses it in the trash can to make a point. Fishes it out again when he's sure she can't hear or see him anymore. Brain looks at him. Says nothing. Smart people know the value of silence.

 

Walking and talking, then. Long hours, lousy pay - assuming there's any at all.

He's his own man though; hard to put a value in cold, hard cash on that.

 _"This about Em?"_ Jerr'd asked, looking a little wary, a bit apprehensive. Like maybe he was smart enough to know what's what after all.

(Turned out he wasn't, of course, in the end. But then, hindsight.)

_"Em's about Em. Me, I'm just interested in maybe making a bit of extra dough. Heard you might be the man to see about that."_

(Dumb question, moronic answer. Everything was about Em, those days. He doesn't regret - you love, you lose; it happens. Man gets to wondering some days, though - and nights, too. What if?)

_"Might be, might be."_

Might be a different world, today, if things had gone down in another way. Might have been _him_ , doing his time, coming out with nothing left to lose but his life.

Wouldn't have been worth it, probably. Assuming you were to look at the whole picture rationally and logically, adding and subtracting and multiplying.

He walks by a supermarket on his way back to the office, gets some air freshener that smells like lemon - or so the box claims. As usual, there's no truth in advertising, but at least you can see the lies coming a mile away; nothing surprising or might-be-might-be-not about it.

 

Phone call at five in the morning.

"If you're calling me from a pen, I might be willing to overlook the time," he says. "Although if you need me to come and pick you up or something, I neither own a car nor the kind of dough that can afford posting bail."

"I know," she says.

His headache still hasn't come back. He hasn't slept properly for close to 48 hours now, not since they picked him up and told him Jerr's dead.

Funny how a guy you never really cared for in life can keep you up and about when he's cold.

"You do, do you?" He feels around for his glasses.

"I really liked you, Brendan."

"Past tense? I'm hurt."

"Can't you love someone without trying to lock them away?"

"I don't know," he says. "Can you?" What he wants to say is, _it wasn't about that_. It's only the truth, though; a poor card to play in any game, especially when you're not sure of the rules.

"I don't want to see you get hurt again."

"You liked me well enough last time it happened," he says. "If memory serves correctly."

"Cad," says she.

"Night, angel," says he. And sleeps like the dead.

 

"You look well," Brain says. New day, no new case.

Being a murder suspect is hell on one's customer base, it appears. Brendan wonders who spilled the beans, if maybe there's a bull down there, hanging out in the hall, warning off potential customers.

"Coincidence," he says. "Anything new?"

"Nothing," Brain says. "She with you?"

"Us," Brendan says.

"If you say so." Brain looks dubious but accepting. Learned how to bend to keep from breaking at a young age, and never un-learned it.

More people like that, and Brendan'd be out of a job. Not the worst thing to ever happen to him, one might argue. He might find something with better pay and shorter hours.

There's always going to have to be someone to deliver the newspaper, for example.

"So," she says, uncrossing her legs and recrossing them, and he notices how the sunlight hits her just _so_ \- all the world's a stage, maybe, but the spotlights are reserved for those in the know.

His head has never felt better.

 

It gets late, some nights - not Wednesday, but Thursday, yeah, and Friday, too. Long hours, and all that, and he wonders at which point, if any, he will find himself walking into a gently lit room where a woman sits behind a piano, playing and reciting a poem, stating her ambitions as clear as can be.

 _as he the sky_ , yes, but how does one rule the Earth, anyway, and why would one even want to?

"Do you trust me now?" she asks, and he says, "No."

She tells him to shut up, then, and fix her a drink, and he does so, thinking, _well, close enough_.


End file.
